A New Instance of Inventor Appears when Opening a New File

A New Instance of Inventor Appears when Opening a New File

While running Inventor, you select a new file to open and a complete new instance of Inventor appears and runs. I have seen this problem occur a couple of times now, so I am writing to explain the solution and how to get around it.

You will need to amend the Registry Keys to get around this issue. Please bear in mind that improperly editing the Windows registry could deem your Operating System unusable so please go to the following link if you need any more information before you start http://support.microsoft.com/support.

Please follow the steps below to help;

– Make sure to be logged in as the Administrator to begin…
– Type ‘regedit’ in the Start bar on your Windows machine

– (At this point you will need to Agree to making changes by selecting ‘Yes’)
– Browse to

Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Inventor.PartDocument/SHELL/open/command

– The data should show /dde at the end of the line.
**IF THIS DOES NOT SHOW PLEASE AMEND, RIGHT CLICK AND CHOOSE MODIFY**

– The second key to check would be the ddeexec data, find this here;

Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Inventor.PartDocument\shell\open\ddeexec

– You should see [open(“%1”)]
**IF THIS DOES NOT SHOW PLEASE AMEND, RIGHT CLICK AND CHOOSE MODIFY**

This will amend the settings Inventor creates when opening a file, once changed to the above you will not see the problem occur again.

Again, please be cautious when editing anything in the registry, and be sure to be logged in with full Administrator privileges.